Working at home business ideas - index

Did you know that car number plates are big business? Over the last 20 years, prices have risen steadily. The plate, AVH9, for example, cost £450 in the mid-80s and is now worth an estimated £4,700. Millions of pounds are spent each year on these unique and eternally popular status symbols.

Talking of property and the US, research circulating at the moment suggests Detroit may become a future hotspot for Brits looking to invest in US real estate. Barack Obama has recently declared his love of Michigan City which instantly promotes the state’s profile all across the world. In addition, the government are currently investing millions into Detroit’s car industry, which is improving the local economy and prospects for investors.

We’ve tipped Entitled To at www.entitledto.co.uk before. It’s well worth a regular mention. Help The Aged reveals that people of pension age miss out on £5.4 billion benefits a year. It’s much the same for families too. Use the calculator at the site to see what you’re due.

My daughter's currently on a gap year between A Levels and university and I've put her to work finding bargains galore for Streetwise members. Today, she's come up with on the go discount vouchers from www.vouchercloud.com.

Licensing involves acquiring the rights to market and/or sell other people's goods and services. Let’s say someone has a successful product or service that’s selling offline. You approach them and offer to sell it for them online. You can often tweak their own marketing and materials for online use. You take orders, pass them on and share the profits up to a 50/50 split. You can license online goods for re-sale as well, of course.

Do not follow through on the current rash of ads that offer to clean up your credit status. The focus is on county court judgements. The so-called trick is to write to the relevant county court stating that you never received the summons.

Lenders judge each application for finance on the basis of an internal credit score and an external credit check. With a credit score, the lender has various criteria and will give marks to your answers in relation to these. As a basic example, owning your own home usually gets a higher mark than if you are a tenant.

Upcycling is something of a trend, appealing as it does to the modern pre-occupation with environmental issues and reducing waste. We recently came across Dutch company Deadjeans who have taken this onboard. They recognised that people can grow quite attached to their old jeans and that when they wear out, not all the garment is useless.

If you have ever had a problem with an estate agent, or are currently planning to buy or sell a UK property, you’ll want to read this. free report is from the Property Ombudsman and is the 2010 Interim Report. It's worth downloading and, at the least, skimming so that you know what’s happening right now in the property market.

Here's a quick tip to cash in on all those old gadgets you have lying around unused and unloved - Old mobile phone's, laptops, MP3's etc. Will pay you hard cash for these unwanted items. The site (which is backed by the Daily Mirror)is very easy to use, you get an instant quote and there is no messing about. It's a great site. Take a look.

Resell rights packages can be money-makers. You can Google and Yahoo for resell rights products which you can buy and then sell on for your own profits. The problem is that many of the same e-reports, e-books and e-courses are sold everywhere! You can still make yours unique and profitable.

Sterling – Euro? ‘Despite a recent surge in the euro, underlying economic problems will still not go away. In the spring, eurozone sovereign debt was the focus of the FX markets and euro weakness was clear before a rescue package introduced by the ECB provided the euro with some much needed support. More recently, cracks have begun to appear again.’

According to The Telegraph, a group of university students at Southampton say they’ve cut the cost of their weekly shop by using a little-known comparison site. The site compares the cost of your weekly shop with Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury and Ocado. It also offers a range of voucher codes too which are always welcome. Check it out.

In these days of tight lending criteria and limited funding, a good rule of thumb for property investors is to see where the banks are lending on the basis that, all things being equal, they are investing in what they consider to be 'safe bets'.

We bought a new mini for my wife last year and by trawling for best prices across the country and presenting the best price (from Grimsby) to our local dealer we managed to cut the best part of £2,000 off the price.

Talking to members, the favourite money-maker right now is buying and selling prints from old newspapers and magazines. There’s a good income to be made simply by packaging these prints neatly, categorising them by theme and then selling them on to collectors on eBay

If you are looking to buy property overseas, do watch for improving accessibility via rail and air links. For example, new high speed TGV lines are to run in France between Bordeaux and Toulouse and from Bordeaux down to the Spanish border.

Meantime, Bengt Saelensminde in Money Week offers some really sound advice for when it comes to doing your due diligence on companies. 'Look for simple accounts. Make sure you can see what's going on straight off. Look for companies with directors that speak in a normal and candid way.'

According to brokers Your Mortgage Decisions, offset mortgages are becoming more popular and now account for some 11 per cent of new mortgages. An offset mortgage is one where your savings and mortgage effectively go into the same pot and your savings offset some of the interest on the mortgage.